Omineca Mining and Metals Ltd. (TSXV: OMM) (OTCQB: OMMSF) has announced the discovery of a hard rock (lode) gold zone from its 2025 winter drill program at the Wingdam gold exploration project, located in the Cariboo Mining District of south-central British Columbia. The initial gold intercepts, drilled 500 meters west of and at depths lower than the elevation of the Wingdam underground paleoplacer gold project, validate the company's assertion of a proximal lode source for the rich paleoplacer gold found beneath Lightning Creek.
The discovery aligns with recent empirical evidence in the underground placer workings indicating that Lightning Creek flowed from west to east (opposite its present direction) when the gold was eroded into the valley, meaning the source lies downstream of the placer deposits. Omineca's ongoing exploration program will focus on expanding the footprint of this discovery, with details to be announced once finalized.
Highlights from the drill program include WD25-41, which returned 4.84 g/t gold over 1.07 meters from 158.98 to 160.05 meters, and WD25-42, which returned 1.25 g/t gold over 2.0 meters from 345.00 to 347.00 meters. These results mark the first lode gold discovery in the Lightning Creek valley, 165 years after placer gold was first found there.
The highest-grade intercept was found in a section of amygdaloidal basalt associated with the Slide Mountain Terrane, which is dominant in ophiolites (ancient seafloor thrust upward) and well preserved along the Eureka Thrust Fault near Wingdam. These ultramafic oceanic crustal rocks are affiliated with many of British Columbia's orogenic gold camps, including the Barkerville Gold camp 30 kilometers east, the Cassiar camp in northern B.C., the historic Bralorne camp to the west, and the Greenwood Mining District in southern B.C.
The company's exploration thesis is based on changes in watershed flow direction caused by isostatic depression during glaciation. The weight of the Cordilleran ice sheet pushed down the area west of Wingdam, causing the Fraser River to switch from northerly flow to its present southern course about 760,000 years ago, and later, approximately 200,000 years ago, Lightning Creek to change from flowing east to flowing west. These forces, combined with potential re-activation of the Eureka Thrust Fault, explain why the lode source is located downstream (west) at depths equivalent to and below the level of the underground placer workings, where 173.4 ounces of placer gold was recovered from a single crosscut sample in 2012.
The reversed water flow thesis has been confirmed in Omineca's underground workings. The opening of Crosscut #2, viewed in cross section, shows imbrication (overlapping arrangement of pebbles and cobbles) in the brown gravel layer, indicating water flow was left to right (west to east) along the Lightning Creek valley, opposite to the present flow direction.
The 2025 drill program completed 3,091.9 meters in six NQ diamond drill holes, following up on mineralization found in 2024. Drilling was done by Newmac, with core logged and sampled by TerraLogic Exploration. A total of 1,978 drill core samples and 179 QA/QC samples were collected. WD25-41 was a downdip follow-up of WD24-37, which had anomalous gold concentrations (870 ppb Au) in a brecciated and faulted ultramafic amygdular basalt. WD25-41 aimed to re-test these features and intersected the most anomalous gold result on the property to date, with localized fracturing and calcite-quartz veins containing disseminated pyrite. WD25-42 targeted the magnetic high outlined by a 2024 UAV magnetic survey and intersected gold mineralization in a lithic wacke with minor quartz veinlets and disseminated pyrrhotite and pyrite.
Drilling confirmed the presence of high-grade gold mineralization on the southeastern side of Lightning Creek associated with ultramafic rocks and quartz-calcite veining. With this discovery, Omineca will ramp up investigation of hydrothermal gold mineralization associated with the Eureka Thrust Fault, focusing on the immediate vicinity of the discovery. The next phase of exploration will prioritize expanding the footprint of this new lode gold zone.
